Nov 27, 2013

Two of our Chennai HAMS who have also been associated with chennaihamsblogspot development are also part of the VU7AG Lakshadweep Islands DXpedition team. We are proud of this association and congratulate their efforts.

Nov 25, 2013

The team reports that all is going well barring the internet connection which has been a real let down. Log uploads to Clublog are proving to be very tedious. All the logs are intact but not all are on the Clublog server. Seems some 30m QSOs are missing and these would be looked into. The team would be setting up the 160m top-loaded vertical today. The last of the antennas to go up would be a Spiderbeam which will be used for the third station. VU2PAI and VU3DMP join the team tomorrow. All three stations should be QRV from tomorrow afternoon, approximately 1200z onwards.

The team continues to focus on NA and alternates between working EU and NA, especially on the short path. They request co-operation from EU when they are working NA and SA which has the largest population of hams requiring VU7 for a new one. The feedback received so far has been passed on to the team and they will pay closer attention to certain band openings.

The team spent the better part of the weekend installing antennas. They now have phased verticals for 80, 40 and 30m apart from a Hexbeam, a 2el Steppir beam and Butternut verticals. They reported working NA on 40 and 75m SSB last night . More pictures awaited whenever they are able to get a stable internet connection.

A team of amateur radio operators are now active as VU7AG from Agatti Island (AS-011) until December 10th.

Agatti is one of the islands of Lakshadweep group formerly known as the Laccadive, Minicoy, and Amindivi Islandsis a group of islands in the Laccadive Sea, 200 to 440 kilometres (120 to 270 miles) off the south western coast of India. The archipelago is a Union Territory and is governed by the Union Government of India. They were also known as Laccadive Islands, although geographically this is only the name of the central subgroup of the group. Lakshadweep comes from "Lakshadweepa", which means "one hundred thousand islands" in Sanskrit as well as many Indian languages like Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu and others.The islands form the smallest Union Territory of India: their total surface area is just 32 square kilometres (12 sq mi).The islands are the northernmost of the Lakshadweep-Maldives-Chagos group of islands, which are the tops of a vast undersea mountain range, the Chagos-Laccadive Ridge.

Agatti Island, also known as Agathy, is a 5.6 km long island, situated on a coralatoll in the Union Territory of Lakshadweep, India. It is located about 459 km (285 mi) off Kochi in the mainland and 7 km to the southwest ofBangaram, the nearest island. Kavaratti, the closest inhabited island, lies 54 km to the SE and the uninhabited Suheli Par atoll 76 km to the south. Agatti's total land area is approximately 2.7 km² (1 sq mi). The small island of Kalpitti is located at the southern end on the same reef.

Activity will be on 160-10 meters using CW, SSB and RTTY. The updated suggested frequencies are:

The pilot stations have been announced: Stan/KH6CG (Chief Pilot
+ Asia/OC), Gary/DF2RG (EU), Luc/LU1FAM (Central & South America), Mark/N1UK (NA East Coast) and Rich/KY6R (NA West Coast). They also have an ePilot on their Web site through which DXers can get in touch with them.

The Propagation page now includes custom propagation charts thanks to Stu, K6TU, and his wonderful propagation service.

Another callsign has been issued for demonstration purposes on Kavaratti Island ­ VU7KA. This would be used only briefly when team members make presentations to the local administration in Kavaratti and educate them on amateur radio.

QSL Manager is Krish, W4VKU, direct or by the Bureau (see details on the Web page). An Online QSL Request System (OQRS) will be available for all your QSL requests. OQRS will be enabled soon after the expedition. For Logbook of The World (LoTW): QSOs would be uploaded
to LoTW in approximately 6 months time.

The following Web page has been set up and contains bios of operators, QSL details, frequencies and a survey.